David Condon Finds

When social media first started becoming important for businesses, I was completely sold on the idea. For a small business, it looked almost revolutionary. You could set up a Facebook page, show people what you made, talk directly to customers, build a following and reach people far beyond your local area without needing a huge advertising budget. For someone running a small independent business, that was incredibly appealing. You no longer had to rely entirely on newspaper advertising, expensive print campaigns or hoping somebody happened to walk through the door. You could take a photograph, write a few words and potentially put your work in front of hundreds or thousands of people and not just in your own country. I was genuinely excited by it. Years later, my opinion of social media is very different. I still use it because, like many small businesses, I feel I have to. But if social media disappeared tomorrow, I honestly don't think I would miss it. In fact, part of me wishes ...

I decided to write this after being contacted by two different ladies in a fairly short space of time who were both in much the same situation. I had only launched my Buy & Sell page a few weeks beforehand so this was new to me. They had been left with workshops full of tools and machinery and were trying to work out what to do with them. I was able to help to a point, but I didn't particularly like feeling unprepared when replying to them. I know tools. I worked with them during my carpentry days and I use woodworking and woodturning machinery every day in my current workshop. What I hadn't really thought about was how different the situation looks from the other side. A woodworker can walk into a workshop and immediately recognise a bandsaw, lathe, planer, chuck, sharpening system or set of turning tools. The daughter or son trying to clear their father's workshop may have absolutely no idea what any of it is. The machine name doesn't mean anything to you if you h...

Free shipping sounds fantastic. As a customer, I like it too. If I am comparing two websites and one wants €8 or €10 for delivery while the other offers free shipping, I know which one immediately looks more attractive. I have chosen the free-shipping option plenty of times myself. Occasionally I have even thought afterwards that I should probably have supported the smaller business instead of giving my hard earned money to a large faceless entity. The post purchase guilt trip is never easy. The problem is that shipping is never actually free. Somebody is paying for it. For a large retailer, absorbing that cost can be relatively easy. For a very small business, particularly one making or selling low-margin products, free shipping can quickly turn a perfectly reasonable sale into a transaction that barely makes any money at all. I know because I tried it. I Kept Increasing My Free Shipping Threshold When I first introduced free shipping on my own website, I think my threshold was somewh...

LEGO collecting as an adult can get out of hand very quickly. What starts as one set for nostalgia, display, or a bit of quiet building time can slowly turn into helmets, UCS sets, retired models, display shelves, and a mental list of sets you still hope to buy one day. That is more or less how it happened for me. I didn’t start writing about LEGO because I planned to become a LEGO expert. I started because certain sets kept catching my attention. Some were sets I already owned. Some were sets I had built. Others were sets I kept looking at online and wondering whether they were worth the money, the space, and the time. This page brings together my LEGO posts in one place. Some of these posts are based on my own LEGO collection and building experience. Others are collector-style or affiliate posts where I look at LEGO sets that may appeal to adult collectors, Star Wars fans, film fans, and people who simply enjoy display-worthy models. If you are interested in LEGO Star Wars, UCS ...